Suicide's Suicide

Andi Coulter

• Editorial: Bloomsbury Academic
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501355677
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Categoría: Musik

New York City in the 1970s was an urban nightmare: destitute, dirty, and dangerous. As the country collectively turned its back on the Big Apple, two musical vigilantes rose out of the miasma. Armed only with amplified AC current, Suicide's Alan Vega and Marty Rev set out to save America's soul. Their weaponized noise terrorized unsuspecting audiences. Suicide could start a riot on a lack of guitar alone. Those who braved their live shows often fled in fear--or formed bands (sometimes both). This book attempts to give the reader a front-row seat to a Suicide show. Suicide is one of the most original, most misunderstood, and most influential bands of the last century. While Suicide has always had a dedicated cult following, the band is still relatively unknown outside their musical coterie. Arguing against the idea of the band's niche musical history, this book looks at parallels between Marvel Comics' antiheroes in the 1970s and Suicide's groundbreaking first album. Andi Coulter tells the origin story of two musical Ghost Riders learning to harness their sonic superpower, using noise like a clarion call for a better future.

1

Prelude to a Private Armageddon

The sky erupted in light, then turned entirely black. This is the story of a city in darkness.

New York City in the 1970s, a cash-strapped metropolis on the edge of bankruptcy. With crime lurking around every corner, millions flee Manhattan’s squalor in search of suburban salvation. Only the strong or insane can stake claim in the dark streets of downtown. In an attempt to save itself from destitution, New York City waves its white flag at Washington, DC. Big government is in no mood to help the ailing Apple and refuses to aid.

New York City soldiers on. If the government won’t save them, they will have to save themselves.

Summer of 1977: Fear spreads like cancer as the Son of Sam stalks the streets. As the sun sets, the murder rate goes up. Couples killed in cold blood and still the killer evades captivity. Eight victims so far. The bloodlust was spilling over into print. Media’s killer appetite reached a feeding frenzy.

Each incessant headline incited new panic. When would he strike next? No one was safe.

July sets in. New York City is blanketed in oppressive heat. Skyscrapers seem to pluck the sun from the sky and redirect it like a laser onto the sidewalk. Unsuspecting pedestrians feel the fire from all sides. Trapped between overwhelming fear and unbreathable air, the city was on the verge of combustion.

Every day was a test against the imminent danger lurking just outside your door. Those who walked the trash-laden streets of the Lower East Side felt lucky to be alive. They joked that Avenue D stood for “dead.” Attitude was the city’s only armor.

Something had to give. On July 13, the skies opened and lightning filled the air. Then, as if a sign from Satan himself, the city was plunged into complete darkness. Confusion gave way to violence. New York City was about to face its greatest foe: a total blackout.

While the city fought a desperate battle for survival, somewhere out among the seedy streets came a sound—harsh, angry, and apocalyptic. Outside there was only the faint light of the Statue of Liberty. The plight of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses was illuminated through her power-generated light.

Downtown, the only light came from the glow of two headlights. As if by an apparition, the vehicle rolled on amid the screams of the city. The car barreled toward the Bowery propelled by desperation and determination. The two ghost riders careened forward driving toward an unknown destination. Just as it reached the edge of the city, it seemed to tilt upward and disappear.

* * *

The phone rang. I looked up from this week’s Washington City Paper ad long enough to debate picking it up. It was 2003, an era before cell phones, and no way to screen incoming calls. Usually there only on weekdays, I needed to get in an early ad to the papers. I squinted through the grimy bulletproof glass of the box office out into a deserted V Street. It was probably someone looking for set times. I momentarily hesitated, then picked up the phone.

“Hello?” I said tentatively.

“I assume you’re coming to Suicide?”

The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Bernie, one of the night managers at the city’s neighboring club the Black Cat. While the Black Cat was known as the edgier, more indie club than the larger not-quite-corporate 9:30 Club, the two clubs had a surprisingly friendly relationship. When the old 9:30 Club moved from its downtown F Street location over to the U Street corridor section of V Street and 9th, there was an initial competition between the now proximally close clubs. But over the years, the 9:30 Club’s owner Seth Hurwitz and the Black Cat’s owner Dante Ferrando had forged—while maybe not a friendship—at least a mutually agreed upon detente.

While everyone who worked at the Black Cat looked like they themselves were in a cool indie band (and many were), their night manager, Bernie, was cut from a different cloth. While he’d once been a local band scenester, he was a good fifteen years older than most of his club charges. A Jesus-looking figure with long, straggly brown hair, frantically running around the club carrying a coffee in one hand and a hand-rolled cigarette in the other. To those who didn’t know him, one might have suspected Bernie’s demeanor to be chemical, but I knew he burned with the nervous energy of perpetual self-flagellation.

I glanced up at the Black Cat schedule taped to the box-office computer screen. Suicide was scheduled for tonight; however, with an ad due to the paper, I wondered about the likelihood of getting to the show in time. 9:30 Club ads often found me in the uncomfortable position of having to offer up my future children to those working the late-night desk at Washington City Paper. It was the one night when I made no promises or plans, lest I tempt fate, as anything planned on ad night was certain to need canceling.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I promised, mentally making a note to bring Bernie homemade muffins in return for tickets. Partly because I felt guilty for relying on his generosity and partly because I was convinced he subsisted on a diet of exclusively caffeine, nicotine, and cynicism.

I’d now been at the 9:30 Club for about six years. Most of the club’s “old school” referred to the space neighboring Howard University on V Street as the “new” club, having replaced the original small, punk, and view-challenging F Street location, and thus, I was part of the “new” staph—an in-joke name we gave everyone who worked at the club.

Musically and culturally, 2003 was the rise of the electro-clash scene, something I welcomed after the mostly rap-rock that had come to dominate the late 1990s. Last week we hosted Fischerspooner, The Faint, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It was a good time to own an entirely black-clad closet. Though my taste and humor ran dark, my blonde hair and bookish nature made me more akin to Marilyn from The Munsters than Marilyn Manson.

Designed for lovers of Liquid Sky, New York’s music scene was exploding with a plethora of new, arty bands that seemed steeped in the sound of the city circa 1976. Each new band echoed ghosts of New York City’s musical past. Many even sounded like the city’s most dangerous duo, Suicide.

I continue to be amazed at how many bands—and how vas t in sound—continue to be influenced by the New York punk/No Wave/electronic pioneers Suicide. And yet, in all my decades of show-going, I’d never seen the original. I wondered if they could live up to their legacy. They were certainly one of the most musical cult bands around. Ad-night fates be damned, nothing was going to keep me from going.

* * *

This is the story of the antihero.

In 1970, Marvel comics was at a crossroads. Their standard heroes—Superman, Captain America, and Spiderman—were still selling, but their readership was shifting. By the end of the 1960s, American idealism was giving way to cynicism. Anything too black and white was viewed with suspicion.

Marvel needed to contend with America’s growing grey areas. The Vietnam War, rising poverty, and race riots were leading Americans to reject escapist entertainment in favor of realism. Vietnam had taught Americans that it wasn’t so easy to tell the good guys from the bad. As more young men came back in body bags or addicted to heroin, Americans felt they could no longer trust those in charge.

The country’s mounting disillusionment had a ripple effect within the comic book industry. In the 1950s, comics, borrowing from the Motion Picture Associations’ Hays Code, created its own moral code. The Comics Code Authority (CCA) was formed by the Comics Magazine Association of America as an alternative to government regulation. This allowed comic publishers to self-regulate the content of comic books.

The code issued a “general standards” dictum stating that crime could not be presented in a positive light and that criminals must always be punished. Additionally, the police and government were always to be portrayed as heroes and comics should never question established authority. Basically, good shall triumph over evil, end of story.

The resulting Comics Code of 1954 effectively censored comic’s portrayals of crime, law enforcement, and drugs. This was done ostensibly for the sake of the public welfare. But as the 1960s wore on, cultural tastes began to shift. Arts became more accepting of the portrayal of harsh reality in popular media, and the Comics Code began to lose some of its authority.

By the 1970s, Marvel had begun to push back. Within a few years, Ghost Rider (1972), Blade (1973), Wolverine (1974), and The Punisher (1974) had each made an appearance in the Marvel universe. These characters were powerful, but flawed, often opting for their own code of ethics over a prescribed version of right and wrong. They were willing to kill or engage in evil if necessary. And they were exceedingly popular.

It is unsurprising that some of Marvel’s biggest antiheroes were born in the early 1970s. The antihero provided a way to discuss social criticism. If our own government—the one who taught us to live by the rhetoric of the American Dream—is lying to us, who can we trust? The 1970s gave birth to a new American Dream, one in which the individual must forge their own path toward truth. A path that was never clean: often muddied by moral choices in order to protect the greater good.

Out of this paradigm shift in comics came Ghost Rider. Suicide named one of their first songs “Ghost Rider,” a nod to the comic in which a young motorcycle stuntman named Johnny Blaze makes a Faustian deal with the devil in order to save the life of his adopted father. Realizing the trick too late, Johnny Blaze must resign to his fate. As soon as the sun goes down, he becomes the Ghost Rider. Saddled with superhero strength, impervious to pain or bodily consequence, Johnny’s flesh melts away to expose a skeletal frame surrounded in flames, making him the most feared and famous stuntman on the circuit.

The story doesn’t end there. While Johnny must suffer the ultimate consequence of his devil’s deal, his Ghost Rider alter ego is not entirely evil. He learns to harness his power in an attempt to save the innocent. Over time Johnny even learns how to summon the Ghost Rider during the day. Realizing his only sin had been despair, Johnny Blaze comes to understand that eternal damnation is entirely within his control.

Like all good comics, one needs a hard-hitting introduction to a new character. Maybe this character comes in through someone else’s story. Then, the character decides to strike out on his own. The reader is given bits of information about this person’s past, but it isn’t until we are fully vested in this new character do we get their full origin story.

This is the blueprint for the Ghost Rider stories, and in many ways, it is also the template for the creation of Suicide. Two men who had protested against the atrocities of Vietnam, only to see returning vets as the real casualties of war. Two artists who had lived full artistic lives with families before embarking on their new mission: to create the world’s most dangerous and futuristic band.

Both Martin “Marty” Rev and Alan Vega are the authors of their band’s narrative. When asked about the origins of their name, comic-lover Vega would often reply that the name “Suicide” came from an issue of the Ghost Rider series called “Satan Suicide.” This is often taken and repeated as fact, though research reveals that there is no such issue. In fact, the Ghost Rider character (as Johnny Blaze) only made his debut in 1972, a full year after Suicide had formed.¹

Suicide has also hinted that their name came from the returning Vietnam vets who had become hooked on heroin, given to them to handle the horrors of war. Vega once quipped watching them was like “watching a slow suicide.” It is even possible that their name came from the opening song in M*A*S*H., “Suicide Is Painless.”

Whether their name comes from the mythic motorcycle rider who steals souls or the drug that effectively destroyed millions of lives matters not. Suicide the band is driven out of the desire to save. Suicide gave the spectator a glimpse of the specter—to turn into the Hellrider at night, performing aural onslaughts on an unsuspecting audience in hopes of sonic salvation.

Suicide aren’t harbingers of death but instead are possessed by the burning will to live.

The way you tell the story can be as interesting as the story itself. Punk music and comics have always gone hand in hand. Both were often considered “juvenile” or a lesser art. But perhaps the most missed correlation is the humor in both punk and comics.

Suicide—often described by music critics as “nihilist” or just plain noise—were funny. Suicide were the antihero with the gre...